Telephone service subscribers are desirous of having more and better control over incoming telephone calls in order to reduce the occurrence of missed calls, identify incoming calls when on the telephone, receive calls at a telephone of choice, dismiss nuisance calls, or the like.
Generally, for telephone subscribers who do not subscribe to a call screening service, if a call is made to a telephone, and the call is not answered (or some other subscriber-specified criterion is met), the call may be forwarded to a voice mail system. The voice mail system may be provided by a voice mail server or by a peripheral of a switch in a public switched telephone network (PSTN) handling the call, for example. Unfortunately it is not currently possible for the subscriber to monitor or connect a caller who has been forwarded to such voice mail systems except through that specific peripheral. This forces massive upgrades to each of the peripherals to support the functionality.
Inbound call screening services are available, however, to both wireline and wireless telephone service subscribers to permit subscribers to screen incoming calls.
A service adapted for wireline subscribers is taught in U.S. Pat. No. 6,459,780 entitled METHODS AND APPARATUS FOR PROVIDING A CALLED PARTY CALL DISPOSITION OPTIONS IN REAL TIME, which issued on Oct. 1, 2002 to Worster et al. The patent teaches call screening and other communications services that permit a subscriber to be provided with a caller-supplied spoken name when caller ID information is blocked or unavailable. The call screening service subscriber can decide after hearing the spoken identification information how to dispose of a call. A plurality of call disposition options are supported including accepting the call, rejecting the call, transferring to voice mail, etc. When a call seeking call disposition instructions is answered by an answering machine, the caller is connected to the answering machine without further call screening being performed. Thus, the use of home answering machines to receive messages from calls that would otherwise be blocked or disposed of is supported.
In the wireless domain, U.S. Pat. No. 6,246,889 to Boltz et al, entitled SYSTEM, METHOD, AND APPARATUS FOR DELAYED CALL ANSWERING,. teaches a method for enabling a cellular telephone user to answer a call, apply a delayed answering option, or ignore the call, in which case the call is sent to a voice mail box or is not answered. If delayed answering is selected, the call is switched within the mobile switching center (MSC) to an announcement machine, which announces that the called party will become available after a predefined period of time. If the called party requests connection with the calling party, the call is switched within the MSC to the called party. If within a predefined time limit the connection to the call is not requested, the call may be routed to voice mail, disconnected, or the called party may again be requested to hold the line.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,154,646 entitled SYSTEM AND METHOD FOR REAL-TIME INTERACTIVE SELECTION OF CALL TREATMENT IN A RADIO TELECOMMUNICATIONS NETWORK, which issued on Nov. 28, 2000 to Tran et al. describes a modified mobile station that includes a display, a browser application that presents call information regarding an incoming call and call treatment options in a pop-up menu on the display, a key pad for the user to select the call treatment option, and a Client Access Function Teleservice handler that packages selected call treatment options in an IS-136 R-DATA message and sends the R-DATA message to a modified mobile switching center. The mobile switching center sends the call-treatment option to a modified service node in a short message service message. A server in the service node receives the short message service message from the MSC, extracts the selected call-treatment option, and translates the call-treatment option into service scripts understood by the service node. The caller options may include accepting the call, or transferring the call to a selected call transfer number.
Although such call screening and inbound call treatment options are available to service subscribers, they provide a limited number of call handling options, and do not support many desirable features such as single number service, integrated voice mail box, and segregated voice mail box. Nor do they support efficient use of PSTN resources when a call is transferred to a directory number not supported by an MSC serving the called party.
Accordingly there exists a need for a method and system for inbound call control that permits a subscriber to dynamically screen inbound calls, and supports single number service integrated and segregated voice mail options.